Alectrona
Commercial solar by sectorA factory runs heavy, continuous load through the working day, so most of what the roof generates is used on the line rather than exported, which is where commercial solar earns most.
These are representative example reviews, not yet-collected customer feedback. They are written to illustrate the kind of feedback Alectrona aims to earn and are shown as design placeholders while we gather and verify reviews from our first commercial clients. Alectrona is the commercial solar trading brand of RVTC LTD.
What set Alectrona apart was the documented design pack. We had quotes from three installers, but only Alectrona handed us a full set of drawings, a single-line diagram and a design referencing BS 7671 and the G99 connection process. The whole thing read like an engineering submission rather than a sales brochure. Our M&E consultant reviewed it and signed it off without a single query. That gave the board the confidence to release the capital.
Other firms priced our roof off a satellite image and a desktop guess. Alectrona flew an in-house drone survey, fully insured and flown by a qualified commercial drone pilot, and built a 3D model of the actual roof. It picked up plant, vents and a parapet line that a flat aerial photo had completely missed, which changed the panel layout. I would rather find that out at design stage than on the day the scaffold goes up. The accuracy of that survey is the reason I trusted everything that followed.
As a finance director I was wary of being oversold a system bigger than we could use. Alectrona modelled the array against our actual half-hourly consumption data rather than an annual total, so it is sized to what we genuinely draw on site during the day. They were honest that exporting surplus is worth far less than self-consumption, and built the design around that. The capital case stacked up because the engineering was honest, not because the numbers were inflated.
We were undecided between buying outright, leasing and a PPA. Alectrona laid out all three side by side with the pros and cons of each against our balance sheet, instead of pushing the one that pays them best. They were clear about where a PPA makes sense and where capex wins, and pointed us at our own accountant for the tax treatment. The survey and design took a little longer than I expected, but the thoroughness was worth the wait. Genuinely consultative.
The install crew were tidy and well run, and worked to a clear CDM 2015 plan with a proper site induction and RAMS. What impressed me most was the handover. We received a full commissioning pack with the IEC 62446-1 test results, certification, O&M documentation and an as-built record for our maintenance team. As the people who have to live with this asset for the next twenty years, having that paperwork in order matters enormously. Nothing was left loose.
I expected the usual hard sell and got the opposite. After surveying our site Alectrona told us one roof section was not worth covering because of shading, and that a smaller, well-sited array was the better investment than filling every square metre. There was no commission-driven upselling and no pressure. For a six-figure capital project, that straight talk is exactly what you want from the people advising you. We will be using them again on our second site.
Manufacturers are some of the heaviest electricity users on any commercial estate. Compressors, motors, process heat, extraction, lighting and machinery draw a high, steady current from the moment the line starts, and that demand is the single biggest variable input cost most factories cannot easily reduce. A roof-mounted solar array offsets it directly, at source, with no fuel and no moving parts.
For an operator running over 50 kWp of demand, that makes solar worth modelling properly. The case does not turn on roof size or panel count. It turns on how well generation lines up with the load underneath, and on a manufacturing site that match tends to be strong, because the machines are running exactly when the sun is on the roof.
An on-site drone survey and a PV*SOL model before anything is specified.
Solar pays best when generation is consumed on site rather than exported, because a unit used on the line offsets an expensive import unit, while an exported unit is paid far less. The return therefore tracks the load shape rather than the array size. Manufacturing has one of the strongest shapes of any sector. Continuous process and machinery load runs through the working day, so a high share of generation is self-consumed and very little is exported. A single-shift factory uses most of what it makes during daylight. A two or three-shift operation, or one running continuous process plant, draws a heavy baseload that solar tops up rather than spills.
That said, the picture varies by operation. A site with a long seasonal shutdown, a single early shift, or a load that peaks after dark will self-consume less than one running flat through the day, and we size for the profile we actually find. Where the daytime match is weaker, we look at whether battery storage shifts generation into a later shift or the evening, rather than overbuilding a roof that would export cheaply. We say so plainly before anything is specified.
Manufacturing tends to occupy large, single-occupier buildings, the same footprint we work across in industrial units, so the array sits on one continuous roof under one meter, which keeps the design clean and the cabling runs short. As an indicative orientation only, factory systems often fall in the 150 kWp to 1 MWp+ range, though that band is a guide rather than a quote. The real figure comes from the on-site survey and the half-hourly load model, not from a roof estimate. Older works and former mill stock can carry lower structural loading or fragile roof coverings, so the survey checks what the structure will take before any array is sized, and the design works around plant, extraction stacks, rooflights and any roof already crowded with services.
We model your half-hourly consumption against a system sized from an on-site drone survey, so the figure you get is yours, not a from-price. No obligation, no MCS gatekeeping on systems this size.